Introduction

Color Efex Pro 3.0 is a plug-in for Photoshop, Lightroom or Aperture that adds digital filters to your photographs. With 52 filters to create over 250 effects in the Complete Edition, this third instalment should be able to provide a filter for almost any scenario. Nik's unique U Point technology provides the ultimate control to selectively apply enhancements without the need for any complicated masks, layers or selections.

We were really impressed with the speed of installation. It took a couple of minutes to download the file to our computer then around five minutes to unpack and install the program. While installation is going through, Color Efex Pro will scan your computer to find compatible programs to work with. For this review, we chose to operate it on Adobe Photoshop CS4.

Figure 1

To start the program, you need to have an image open first. You can locate Color Efex Pro 3.0 in the Filter tab towards the bottom. Once open, the program loads the first filter in the list automatically. Ideally, I'd like to see no filters applied initially so I can see the changes more effectively, however the first filter is a black & white, so it's not exactly subtle.

Figure 2

Upon first inspection, the interface looks quite intuitive. Towards the top left of the window are a few icons for adjusting the view of the window. You can choose from full size view or split the preview screen. Running over to the right of the window, are a few quick selection tools such as zoom, pan, change background and select.

Figure 3

The main image sits centrally while various tools and options surround it. To the left are the filters available which can be whittled down to different genres depending on your tastes.
There are nine new filters and within some of the filters are extra features such as the Film effects option which has 30 different film filters to choose from and the Cross balance which allows you to select tungsten or daylight casts. It's worth looking on the Nik website to see whether you get all the filters because some are only available on the select or complete editions.

Figure 4 - Cross Processing

To the right of the selected picture are the fine tuning adjustment options. For example, on the black & white conversion that comes up when you first open the program, there are three sliders to change the strength, brightness and contrast as well as a filter colour slider. You can also adjust the highlights and shadows which can be expanded to show a histogram. Keep an eye out towards the bottom or you'll miss the extra features that are hidden behind the Loupe. This Loupe is really useful with a split screen for a before & after preview but there are other options under it such as control points and quick save slots.

One of the cooler bits that I like is the filter selection arrows at the top. The arrows scroll through the different filters in the list to the left.

Control points utilise Nik Software's U Point technology which allow local adjustments. All you have to do is select the point on the picture that you want to edit, change the size and you can control the opacity of the filtration in that area.

Figure 5 - Control Points

There nine new filters that have been introduced to Color EfexPro 3.0 but they vary on availability dependant on the version that you get. However, it's worth noting that the standard version has none of the new filters, they're only added to the select or complete versions.

Luckily for PBlog, I don’t make the decisions. =;O)
It hasn’t been reviewed before and it’s all content, isn’t it?
No-one batted an eyelid when James May gave his first review on Top Gear of a Bentley T2..?

All equipment is reviewed in many places. The review isn’t just a filler, it’s something that’s not been reviewed before here and someone on here won’t have read it anywhere else. That’s what I mean by saying it’s all content.
I never compared myself to Top Gear at all, I was illustrating that just because something isn’t brand new, doesn’t mean it can’t get reviewed.

“Brand new” means “new”. This is what I was originally getting at. Your use of language. The use of “quite” is not really telling us anything. Either a thing is fit for purpose or it isn’t in which case you could explain where it fails. Telling us it’s quite this or quite that is meaningless in a review.

The context that I used them in were the same as going into a restaurant that’s quite nice. It doesn’t mean it fails anywhere, you may have thought it was going to be rubbish and it actually turned out to be quite nice. It’s a word that, like OK, can mean something good. In the first use of the word, I can see what you mean but I’m sorry, I think you’re looking too far into it.

I tried the 2 week demo and liked the dynamic skin softening filter and the U Point feature, which gave great control. However, I use Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5 and didn’t find anything in Nik Efex that I couldn’t do already with Lightroom + Photoshop. I found Nik Efex was quicker to use for skin softening, which might justify the price. Unfortunately, that filter is only available in the complete addition for $299.